In a message to Richard Brice  Jay Hanig wrote:
 JH> I've only accidentally spun an airplane once.  I was practicing slow
 JH> flight with an instructor in a C-172 when a wing dropped.  I
 JH> attempted to pick it up with rudder and it snapped right over.  I
 JH> recognized immediately and recovered before I had made half a turn,
 JH> but the instructor thought that that was enough for one day.
My first spin was an accident.  I was in Army flight school in a T-41B (a 210 
HP constant speed prop Cessna 172 basically).  The Army's power-on stall was 
done with some greatly reduced power setting, maybe 55% at the very most.  At 
any rate, my instructor was a retired USAF Colonel.  He was always the 
gentleman and professional instructor and as every other student, I hero 
worshiped him.  Well, one day I asked him what would happen if we stalled the 
airplane with more than the Army's standard power setting.  He proceeded to 
show me by putting in take-off power and pitch.  As the pitch got steeper and 
steeper I remember him saying "as you can see, this aircraft will really 
stand on its tail prior to a stall."  Then, in the blink of an eye we were in 
a spin.  I didn't even know what a spin was at that time.  The part of the 
maneuver that was most shocking is I had never heard my instructor utter a 
swear word.  Suddenly the intercom was a solid string of one swear word after 
another.  Once he recovered from the spin, the blue string stopped and he 
regained his professional demeanor.  --  Maybe the moral to this story is you 
can take the Colonel out of the Air Force, but you can't take the Air Force 
out of the Colonel.
                                        Best regards, .. Bob
.
... There is safety in numbers - Participate in the "Wings" Program!
--- QuickBBS 2.81 Ovr
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